


What Hurts the Most

by Gainee__X (geeky__chick)



Series: One Man's Worth [2]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Basically my version of DOFP before DOFP was made, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Hurt, Mourning, Not-Days of Future Past compliant, missing moment, sads, so many sads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 03:18:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14824244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geeky__chick/pseuds/Gainee__X
Summary: Piotr Rasputin comes to terms with the bittersweet victory over the Brotherhood. A "Missing Moment" from my fic One Man's Worth. This takes place between the final battle and the last scene.





	What Hurts the Most

He came out alive, but wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. The cure had not stripped his mutation away so the explosion and fire and radiation did nothing to harm him. Part of him hated his mutation for that, wishing that he could have died in that radioactive chamber.  
  
Perhaps, if he had, he would be free from the hurt. From the pain.   
  
He still expected to hear her voice, even after covering the body with a blanket for the trip home. Shadowcat kept her promise; they had not left her behind.   
  
Moving through the halls in slow motion, dead to the world around him, Piotr Rasputin slowly removed the earpiece, crushing it in his hand. The stairs meant nothing as he climbed them, leaving the others to enjoy the taste of victory, no matter how bittersweet.   
  
When he reached his bedroom, he closed the door silently behind him, feeling as though that soft  _click_  of the lock catching might break what composure he retained. Beast insisted he leave the body in the med-lab, where she could be preserved for the funeral.  
  
Piotr hated that he couldn’t bear to think her name. Hated that the memory of her beautiful face without it’s usual light was burned into the back of his eyelids. Her voice still echoed in his ears, along with the gunfire that took her young life. He remembered holding her, rocking back and forth in grief and disbelief.  
  
Her last words, that last ragged breath, told him how she loved him. How did anyone live with that?   
  
Piotr glanced around his room, his heart breaking all over again in his chest. Her things somehow scattered over the room they’d shared for a few short weeks. A pair of those frayed jeans balled up on the floor, one of her skimpy tank tops cast over the edge of a blank canvas.  
  
Canvas.  
  
God. She stared at him with those smiling eyes from canvas all over the room. Mechanically, unable to so much as breathe through the grief, he moved toward them. Slowly, Piotr stretched a hand forward, touching the soft curve of her cheek. Why had he expected the warmth of flesh? Why did the feel of dried paint and rough cloth surprise him?  
  
Her nightgown lay on the edge of his bed, a book she’d been reading beside it. One of his sketches served as her bookmark, if he remembered correctly. She would never finish that story, the ending always out of her reach. How could she leave on chapter twenty-one? Who left that kind of work unfinished?  
  
Piotr sat on the edge of the bed, still dressed in the X-Men leathers now caked with dried blood. Her gown was made of soft cotton. He remembered tossing it across the room just two nights ago consumed with passion’s heat. Her book fell to the floor as the mattress sagged under his weight. The sound reminded him, so painfully, of the bullets that ended Alison Blaire’s life.  
  
“God.”  
  
Pressing her nightgown into his face, Piotr came undone. His cries echoed in the silence, tears soaking the pale yellow material in his hands. Her scent lingered here, the ghost of a girl he’d loved so briefly, so fiercely, surrounding him. It couldn’t be real. God, don’t let it be real.  
  
The door opened and before Piotr could order her away, Katya threw herself into his lap. He clung to her, unable to resist as her tears mingled with his. Her arms wound about his shoulders, Alison’s nightgown caught between them.  
  
She didn’t try to comfort or soothe, but mourned just as terribly. Piotr and Kitty held on, as though afraid they might be lost in the tides of grief if they let go. When Bobby entered the room, slid onto the bed with them, neither shooed him away. Iceman put one arm around the girl he loved, the opposite hand clutching Piotr’s shoulder.   
  
The tears might have drowned them all, but there would be no shame for them. Ali touched each life so deeply, so quickly that the loss of her bled openly. Piotr could hear her voice in his mind, that teasing, taunting tone so recently filled with undercurrents of love. She  _loved_  him.   
  
Piotr did not protest when Bobby and Kitty helped him out of his uniform. He made no sound, eyes unable to produce more tears, even when they tucked him into bed wearing nothing but his boxers. They left him alone, closing the door softly behind them. Piotr buried his face in the pillow.  
  
He’d promised, he thought. Promised on this very bed that they would both come home. They talked of the future…how could that have been less than twenty-four hours ago? She couldn’t be gone. She promised. They promised that the future would be of  _them_.  
  
Piotr repeated this, even as exhaustion carried him off to sleep.  
  
~**~  
  
It took everything in his body to get out of bed the next morning. He rolled over, searching the cold bed for the familiar, grumpy form of the woman he loved. She wasn’t there. She would never be there again.   
  
Eyes bloodshot and puffy from heartache, from lack of sleep, Piotr forced himself to get dressed. The wrinkled t-shirt and rumpled jeans didn’t help his haggard appearance. Piotr couldn’t have cared less. They’d saved the goddamn world and he had so little to show for it.  
  
He’d only gone into battle for  _her_. Who gave a damn if Magneto and Storm tore the world apart? War was averted, but at what cost?   
  
No one bothered to say hello. No one dared. Piotr moved through the halls of Xavier’s School like a wraith, ignoring every living soul that dwelled there. Holding back the pain, the tears, took every ounce of concentration. He wanted to go back to bed, to hole up there until he died from the anguish.   
  
Hauling down every portrait he’d ever painted, Piotr locked them into a storeroom. Unfinished canvases of Ali, finished portraits, charcoal sketches…he put it all away. Part of him knew he would never touch a brush or pencil again. The light in his life, that muse he always worshipped, died on that cold floor with Alison.  
  
That done, he entered the kitchen, knowing if he didn’t attempt to eat, someone would force him to. People converged in the bright space. Conversation was muted, voices betraying pain.  
  
“I located her parents,” Beast was saying to Storm and Wolverine. “They will be here tomorrow.”  
  
“Who’s gonna talk to him?” Wolverine murmured.  
  
“If he’s up for it, Peter should,” replied Storm.  
  
They noticed him then, faces crumbling with sympathy. It turned his stomach. Piotr immediately left, not bothering to say a word. How could they understand? How could they even think he was the one to speak to her family?   
  
Everywhere he went the talk surrounded the loss of Alison. They stopped speaking when they caught sight of him, that same empathy flooding every eye. No, damn it, he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to hear that she’d been such a great person, how they would miss her. Were  _their_  hearts broken? Did  _they_  feel as though the world died with her?  
  
Without really meaning to, Piotr found himself in the med-lab. Unable to stop himself, he went to the stasis chamber, where Beast stored her body. He stood over the table, reaching to pull the metallic covering away.   
  
His heart broke again, seeing her lying there so peacefully. She was clean, her face a mask of serenity. If he didn’t know better, if he couldn’t see the pallor of death beneath peach-colored skin, he might have thought she merely slept. Tears coursed down his face all over again, even as he reached on enormous hand to smooth back her honey-hued hair.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Piotr whispered into the silence. “I broke my promise, my love.”  
  
Choking on grief, he shook his head. “You broke yours. Why did you have to love me, if you were only meant to leave? I should have died, damn it. I wouldn’t have known this pain. I don’t want to know it.  _Ali._ ”  
  
He leaned down, kneeling at the side of her bed. Lips brushed cold flesh, his hands balling into fists on the steel table. Shoulders shaking with silent weeping, he could only let it come. The anger at her for leaving, the overwhelming misery clenched his heart until he could scarcely breathe.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed in broken Russian. “I love you, Brawler. God, I don’t think I ever told you how much.”  
  
“She knew.”  
  
Not particularly surprised by the intrusion, Piotr looked over his shoulder. He didn’t bother to hide the tears or the sorrow as Psylocke stood in the doorway. Her own eyes reflected pain so immeasurable, Piotr could not reply.  
  
“Storm had me monitor everyone,” she explained in that soft, British accent. “I…I was connected to her when it happened.”  
  
He didn’t want to hear it and shook his head while his voice stubbornly refused to work.  
  
“I’ve never felt anything like that.” Psylocke’s voice caught. “I can’t explain it. But she knew that she was the center of your world, just as you centered hers. I’m so sorry, Piotr. I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through, but please know that she did value how much you loved her, how much you always will.”  
  
That unwelcome knowledge didn’t assuage the pain, but worsened it. Piotr turned back to Alison’s cold body, dropping his forehead back onto the steel table. The weeping continued, silently, even as Psylocke touched his shoulder. She stayed with him for hours, never speaking, never moving, but there in case he needed her.  
  
Part of him would ever be grateful.  
  
~**~  
  
The second day was no easier than the first. He did get better at hiding his pain, even as he spoke to Beast about funeral arrangements. Storm insisted Alison be buried beside Xavier, Cyclops and Jean. Piotr refused to argue the point. What did it matter?  
  
When he entered the living room that terrible morning, he hadn’t managed to dress any better, nor hide the pain in his eyes. He put up a good front otherwise, nodding when Storm asked if he wanted to meet Mr. and Mrs. Blaire.  
  
She left him alone with the grieving parents, closing the wide French doors behind him. Mr. Blaire was tall, dark haired and even featured. He had Alison’s deep, expressive eyes and the same stubborn chin. His build was that of a boxer, all rough edges and muscle tucked into an expensive suit.  
  
Mrs. Blaire resembled more of her daughter. Long, honey-blonde hair kept in neat waves framing a face that might have been taken directly from Alison’s body. Her stature was diminutive, tiny, much as her daughter had been. Pain ripped through Piotr’s heart again, but he forced himself to take a step toward the people that brought Ali into the world.  
  
“My name is Piotr Rasputin.” He managed without his voice shaking.  
  
“Ah,” Mr. Blaire took his hand in a quick shake. “Alison’s boyfriend.”  
  
Boyfriend? Ha. What a ridiculous word. He would have married that girl, should have the moment Katya and Bobby stepped through the door with her on their heels.  
  
“I love her, yes.” Piotr nodded, taking Mrs. Blaire’s hand.  
  
“Oh?” The woman’s tone was flat and she dropped his hand as though he burned. “Then why didn’t you save her?”  
  
“Katherine,” Mr. Blaire interrupted.  
  
“No,” Piotr shook his head, fighting back tears. “I should have. Perhaps if I had been a little faster, I might have been able to spare her life. That, I’m afraid, is something I will have to come to terms with on my own.”  
  
Carter Blaire took his wife by the shoulders as she broke into uncontrollable weeping. He settled her on the sofa while Piotr clinically fetched a tissue for her. She accepted the gesture, looking away from him to cry.  
  
Mr. Blaire, however, turned sympathetic eyes to Piotr.  
  
“You have to understand, we haven’t seen Alison in over six years.” Carter explained quietly. “She never told us she was a mutant, we thought she’d just vanished to follow her singing dreams.”  
  
Piotr nodded, trying to reconcile what Ali told him of these people with the grief naked in Mr. Blaire’s eyes. “She was on her own for a long time. Only recently did the X-Men find her.”  
  
“I don’t understand any of this, Carter,” Katherine interjected. “Why would she run from us?”  
  
Resigned to the fact that they deserved an explanation, Piotr settled on the opposite sofa, gesturing for Carter to take a seat. Ali might not have wanted them to know where she was, but Piotr trusted his instincts. They did love her, no matter what problems cropped up in her youth.  
  
“Alison,” just speaking her name brought him pain. “Alison always feared that the two of you wanted to mold her into something she was not. She decided that as a mutant, you would never accept her.”  
  
“I love my daughter,” Carter fumed, his hands clenching. “How could you possible know so much about my family?”  
  
Piotr met angry brown eyes without flinching. “I asked. She answered. I knew her, every line of her face, every emotion in her eyes, every inflection in her voice. You cannot know what her death is doing to me.”  
  
Taken aback, both Blaires faltered. Piotr took his chance and continued.   
  
“She came here because the madman known as Magneto tried to recruit her. When Alison refused the offer, Magneto’s henchmen decided she needed to die. Luckily, two of my friends happened to be there. They offered her a chance here.”  
  
When neither spoke, he cleared his throat, knowing the pain was reflecting in his tone.  
  
“She saved my life,” Piotr went on quietly. “In doing so, we found each other. Alison lit my world on fire, and nothing in this life will ever compare to her.”  
  
Carter gave Piotr a brief smile. “I wish I could have seen her in love. My baby girl all grown up.”  
  
Katherine whimpered, reaching for Piotr’s hand. “My dear boy, I’m so sorry. I guess I didn’t think anyone lost her but us.”  
  
“You will find,” his voice cracked. “That many in this house lost her. Alison, like gravity, pulled people in. No matter how one might have tried to resist.”  
  
Carter stood, coming around to clap Piotr on the shoulder. His free hand grasped his wife until the three of them formed an odd circle. He wondered if Ali looked down on them now, smiling as those she loved remembered her fondly.  
  
Some time later, Storm reentered the room, telling them quietly that the funeral would begin.  
  
~**~  
  
Kitty, Bobby, and Piotr sat together on the folding chairs set up for the funeral, long after the others trickled away. Alison’s coffin was not yet interred, lying innocently on the rigging that would lower her into the earth.   
  
Both Bobby and Kitty each clung to one of his hands, tears fresh on all three faces. Kitty’s eulogy left no eye dry, though her voice remained strong, her adoration for the friend she lost evident. She spoke at length on Ali’s wonderful heart, the beauty of her music, the vibrancy of the life ended too soon.   
  
He’d accepted the embraces from his friends, from Ali’s parents, but scarcely remembered them. Piotr spent the funeral locked in memory. From that first meeting, where she smiled at him to the football game to her nearly-fatal leap in front of him during Pyro’s attack. He had every image of her etched into his memory. Even when she laughed while he painted her, the sheet concealing her nudity.  
  
For a long time, he stared at the name engraved on her tombstone. The dark granite matched the other three, as though Storm wanted no one to doubt that their young friend had died an X-Woman.  
  
Finally, he stood, letting Kitty and Bobby release him. He took the long walk back to his room silently, removing his tie as he entered. He packed what he needed, mainly clothing and books, into a large duffel. The air-ticket lay on top, along with the passport he would need to get home.  
  
He also packed Alison’s things. Her clothes, her cosmetics, and the battered, beloved guitar. For himself, he kept a few photographs and the last music she ever wrote. Three songs no one would ever hear, all of them explaining in heart-rending lyrics how she’d fallen in love. That was his, she’d written it for him and he would cherish every note.  
  
Once the boxes were filled, he set them on the linen-free bed beside his duffel. He left instructions in a short letter that the Blaires were to be given every art piece he’d created in Ali’s likeness. One exception was at Storm’s request, the portrait of Alison he created after the football game. She would add it to those of the Professor, Cyclops, and Jean.  
  
Preparations finished, Piotr slung the duffel over his shoulder and – still wearing the black suit he’d donned for the funeral – left the bedroom they’d shared. Kitty and Bobby were in the hallway, waiting for him.  
  
Wordlessly, the trio embraced. They had his parents’ address and phone number, when they wanted to talk, he would be there.  
  
The couple held hands when he turned to leave, jogging down the steps as he headed for the door. There was a taxicab waiting for him, as though his leaving were not only anticipated, but also completely understood.  
  
He stepped through the mansion’s door, smiling slightly when Storm and Wolverine turned at the sound. They both offered small, understanding smiles.  
  
“Keep in touch?” Storm requested, hugging him quickly. “I’m so sorry, Peter. I really am.”  
  
He had to close his eyes against the swell of sorrow. “Ensure that the Blaires get her things, but let Katya and Bobby select mementos.”  
  
“Of course.” She sniffled, pulled back, stepped away.  
  
To his surprise, the Wolverine embraced him as well. “Take care of yourself, kid.”  
  
“I will,” he swallowed over the lump in his throat, giving Wolverine three strong slaps on the back in that oddly male fashion. “When you see Shard and Bishop again, thank them for me. Please.”  
  
If this surprised the feral mutant, he didn’t let it show when they parted. He merely nodded, releasing the younger man silently.  
  
Piotr gave them both a curt nod, shifted the duffel on his back and marched down the steps. He did not look back as the driver opened the door. His duffel went in before he slid into the seat and firmly pulled the door closed.  
  
They watched him, so many young and mature mutants, from windows and doors as the taxicab pulled down the long drive. Piotr put his head back against the seat, unwilling to look again at the place where Alison changed his life. He would take her to Russia, as he once promised, but inside his heart. That was her place, where she would ever remain.  
  
“Goin’ overseas?” The driver asked as they eased through the massive, wrought iron gates.  
  
“Home,” Piotr answered quietly, turning his head on the edge of the seat to look out the windows.   
  
“Just going home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this series. It's so old but I'm still so proud of it!


End file.
